Spring flowering in an arid garden

 

Rules are amde to be broken

I sit front and centre in the Form Over Flower camp; however, as with all things there are exceptions and the cute flowers on this diminutive cactus are wonderful.

 

Show me the flowers

 

Aloe finishes flowering

 

Aloe pilanties (sp?) at night in wattlebird delight flowers

Here is a much better day time shot of its trunk.

Dracaena Draco at night

bird of paradise strelitzia

salvaged bird os paradise florishing in my garden, another four flowers this year makes ten flowers,4,4,2 since I rescused it from a residential development site clear. Credit to the guys they delivered it into the right position for $50, a bargain for a huge three people required plant like this. Massive root system. Said to be hard to transplant, though haven't checked the vorasity of that yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strelitzia
http://www.clemson.edu/charleston/local/bird/bopspecies.htm
http://tinyurl.com/p42yn University of Florida pdf 

Budding Aloe Ferox

The wattle birds and I are both excited to see the Aloe Ferox preparing to flower in it's new home.

 

Jade in full flower

Our Jade plant looks wonderful most times and in full flower it looks huge and magnificient.

 

Aloe Starting to Flower

One of my favourite flowerings of the year is this Aloe forex flowering. I only noticed the flower bud starting while on our roof fixed the sunlizard.

 

Small and beautiful

This tiny flowering native is a real stunner. The flowers are so small you could miss them, but once glanced your eye will be drawn to their beauty.

 

Dracaena draco seedlings

Pretty boring picture of seedlings. My excitment lies in that these are from seeds off my Dracaena draco. Seeds I collected after this flowering. This is the second seed tray, the first is planted out along with a dozen or two other free sewn Draco seedlings. I will have my Draco forest. For now I'll plan a boulevard leading to my shed.

 

Aloe Trunk

I love the trunk on this Aloe pillanties (sp?). I have grown this Aloe from one small branch. Love it now and look forward to seeing it grow over the next ten years. Kids are a danger to the well being of this plant. I know kids are a risk, so if damage occurs I should quietly weep rather than grind the kid in to breakfast cereal topping (sorry in-joke I have with Reed)

Jade bringing pink to our world

Taken today 17 May, the Jade has been in flower since Reed's 5th birthday party. That was a great day. It's wonderful seeing our children and my garden growing in to such wonderful living beings.

Aloe Aloe What have we 'ere

This monster Aloe is flourished since being moved, it now dominates the path entrance to the shed. Love it. Seeing wattle birds balance on its flower stem in Spring brings much happiness.

Is time relevant

Oringinally posted at http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=23909713&post=true
Take this post for example. You could be reading this anytime form now. So is future time irrelevant to this post, or is it the only time that is relevant. If it could be any future time then maybe all points in time are irrelevant but time itself is relevant. What does this mean for us? I'm not sure except that I have not thought enough about time and if you have please share your thoughts.

I know that when I look at a plant, I often see it in many forms, at many points in time, for example I see my Dracaena draco, http://www.mediterraneangardensociety.org/plants/Dracaena.draco.cfm, as the plant it is now, as a seddling and as a mature specimum ten years from now. This confirms that it possible to envisage life without linear time, life without a series of points on a line. Just like a candle graph has more detail than a line graph, the candle letting you move around within the single point on a line; maybe we could perceive life more like that.

The final placements

I hope today hearalded the final placement of the major plants. Garden layered front to back; water, salads, cacti, succulents, herbs and cacti.

 

Form over flower

Form over Flower features in my list of twenty things that define me. Though seeing amazing flowers like this Pineapple lilly in my garden does make me re-examine my position. 

Close up on Cactus Flower

These flowers are so amazing and while other gardens are wilting in 40 celius plus my garden is flourishing. 

Anyone for Cactus Honey

My large cacti are busy adding flower to form. They entice the local bees deep in to their compex flowers. 

Yucca, home to Blackbirds

Three Blackbird chicks at home in Yucca

These three Blackbird chicks grew up so fast, that I missed their first flight. Their mum and dad nested in the yucca plant that you can see above.